"If I could figure out what the commands, the packets, were that we being fed to the lights," said Lee, "then I could interactively turn them on and off, which is basically the basis for any game." Luckily for the team, the data being fed to the lights was unencrypted, and they were able to work through this problem relatively quickly.

which was hooked up to an off-the-shelf X-Arcade Dual Joystick via USB—this same control panel, which holds eight joysticks and two buttons for each, is commonly used in custom-built MAME arcade cabinets for those who don't want to build their own custom control panel.

Pretty cool, though I always disliked this building in Philly, its a beautiful building but there was always something off putting about it, I think its because its designed to be seen differently from different angles.

Yes the Marriott in KC did something similar but the Marriott's displays are all programmed, no interactivity.

I seem to remember the CCC's Berlin/Paris Blinkenlights projects to have taken place on sizeable towers. When they came to Toronto, they used City Hall, which is two towers which together add up to 47 storeys, so technically that's bigger. I felt it didn't work particularly well, though, since most of the time they ended up splitting it four ways to accommodate reasonable aspect ratios.

But let's be fair, just because there's a contrafactual claim in the developer's words (correctly presented as a subjective, unverified claim by the reporter), that doesn't make it any less agreeable to get a look into the kitchen of this sort of undertaking.